Powerdown (Richard Mariner Series)

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Come back, Sergeant,’ Vivien called to one of them, ‘We still have a lot of talking to do.’

  In spite of her invitation to talk, Sgt Killigan and Mrs Agran soon sat face to face like a pair of card-sharps in the old West, each trying to work out what was in the other’s hand while revealing nothing of what was in their own. She did not reveal, for instance, that Vasily Varnek was already prepared to destroy this pair of importunate Americans on her say-so. He did not reveal that he had every intention of killing her himself with the dock in his baggy right pocket unless this negotiation went very smoothly indeed.

  The Power Strip now lay on the desk between them but neither of them looked at it for fear that a downward glance might miss something important in the poker-face opposite. ‘It’s useless to you on its own,’ grated Killigan calculating the repercussions of reclaiming it at gun point. ‘Unless you’ve got access to scientists — experts — and a whole bunch of other stuff. Even if I let you keep it there’s nothing you can do with it.’

  ‘Except to sell it. I don’t have any scientists or equipment here — any more than you do — but I know people who do. Rich people. If you let me keep it and deal on your behalf.’

  A brief silence fell, broken only by the throbbing of the engines and the battering of the wind. Each player weighed up the implications of what the other had said. Killigan began to wonder to what extent he might explore Mrs Agran’s actual ability to ‘deal’ on his behalf. He himself had managed to reawaken an old market on the ruins of the Russian economy, half KGB, half Russian mafia. But he was unable to offer them the Power Strip itself. They were expecting the design specifications Mendel had transferred to a priceless disk during the last few days at Armstrong. On receipt of an agreed section of the information Killigan’s contacts would wire five million dollars to an agreed destination and he would send the rest on confirmation of the funds’ arrival, then oversee its distribution amongst his associates. But here was Mrs Agran offering to sell the Strip as well.

  Mrs Agran was more subtly reading between the lines of what the Sergeant had said. If the Power Strip was useless commercially to both of them at the moment, then he had to be in possession of something that was saleable. And that could only be the design specification of the Strip. Mrs Agran’s ready intelligence leaped through the reasoning swiftly. She leaned forward, unconsciously for once, well beyond such simple tricks as distracting him with her cleavage. ‘And I can deal on your behalf when it comes to the disks as well.’

  For a moment Killigan’s mind span out of control behind his granite poker face. Had Billy double-crossed him after all? More likely the pathetic bastard had let something slip. His right palm itched for the handle of the Glock. That would solve a lot of things here and now. And he would take care of Varnek and the rest in due course if he had to. As long as the disk was safe.

  But then the detail of her words registered. She said ‘disks’. She didn’t know that the whole thing was safely stored on one. There had been no slip-up, no betrayal; simply a lucky guess. Killigan’s palm stopped itching and he continued to reassess this woman and what she could do for him. Hoyle was right. She was a wiseguy all right connected to the Mafia back home. If so, then he could, perhaps, deal with her — for anything up to the disk. But not for the disk itself. Not for anything. He and Hoyle would be popping that little mother onto the Internet as arranged. Nothing could be allowed to get in the way of that. His deal cut both ways. If the information on that precious little piece of plastic didn’t get to its destination as promised tonight not only would Killigan be down the promised five million, but the remainder of his life would be a short, painful and probably bloody affair indeed.

  Even so, Killigan leaned back in the chair with an assumption of confident ease. ‘OK, lady,’ he said. ‘Let’s treat this like a first date — see how far we can get before somebody gets their face slapped.’

  Half an hour later Mrs Agran was the little consortium’s American agent, in for a little slice of the Russian fortune, offering the actual Strip to her contacts Stateside for whatever else could be garnered; seeing what the information on the disk might fetch, even secondhand. She decided to warn Varnek to keep away from them for the time being. And Killigan had decided that she would remain undamaged as long as she remained of service to them — and as long as he kept his hands on their ace in the hole — the disk.

  *

  Gretchen arrived at the Mariners’ stateroom just before one. The tall, blonde girl was an instant hit with both the children. Self-possessed and cheerful, she told them about her six little brothers and sisters away at home in the States, recounted tales of the classroom, and swept them up into her cosy little world. She quickly sorted out everything she could find which might be counted on to amuse the twins. And so she settled in, freeing Richard and Robin of parental responsibility so suddenly that they felt a little disorientated.

  ‘Right,’ said Richard, testing his new freedom. ‘Let’s find Jolene, tell her what the twins told us, and then maybe look for Colin and Kate and see what’s planned for the rest of the day partywise.’

  Robin grinned. ‘I know you better than that. After you’ve found your little inspector and checked out how her investigation’s going, you’ll want to get up to the bridge and check on the storm. You’re just about the least convincing party animal on the face of this earth.’

  ‘Hmm,’ conceded Richard. ‘That’s as maybe. But let’s look in on the dining salon at least. To begin with. Take it from there.’

  So out they went, leaving Gretchen and the twins playing ‘hunt the thimble’. As she closed the door, Robin thought what an excellent game that would be for anyone wanting a good look round their quarters. But then she remembered that the stewards had unpacked and put away everything they possessed aboard, and they would certainly have reported to Mrs Agran.

  The party on Bellingshausen-Peary was beginning to spill out of the dining salon. Because lunch was being served, those who wished to drink and watch the television were out in the main bar area.

  Richard saw Jolene in a quiet little corner near the library, deep in thought. He joined her and told her what the twins had said about Billy Hoyle and his activities in the base. ‘That fits,’ she said grimly. ‘But did they mention anything about the Power Strip, a long piece of silver, like tin foil?’

  ‘No,’ said Richard.

  ‘Tell you what, then, why don’t you go off and relax a bit while I find T-Shirt and get him to help me do some more digging. We’ll catch up later, maybe chew the fat a little more.’

  ‘Chew the fat,’ said a passing passenger, a tall, deep chested Caribbean girl with an athletic body and a wide smile. ‘Good phrase. Have you been in to lunch yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Richard. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ chuckled Jolene, and she joined the boisterous crowd in search of T-Shirt.

  Richard and Robin found Colin and Kate enjoying a light lunch. ‘Very unusual,’ said Colin. ‘You order what you want then you eat what you get.’

  ‘Which is not the same thing at all,’ chimed in Kate cheerfully. ‘It seems to go like this. The system relies on waiters keying in orders on notepad computers which beam everything directly to the galley computers. These apparently process the orders, prioritise what needs preparing in what order, signal where everything can be found and print out the odd recipe or two, I shouldn’t wonder. I guess real people pick up and cook the ingredients somewhere along the line, then tell the computer to signal that the meals are ready to serve. No longer. Now we have a bunch of men and women laboriously taking orders on paper in writing it is difficult to read and passing them on by hand to a kitchen whose computer is no help at all in finding, sorting or prioritising anything. The cooks therefore are doing the best they can but taking so long about it that your waiter will probably end up bringing you the order he took last sitting or the one before. We ordered egg salad and pickled herring and ended up with vegetable soup.’

 
‘OK,’ said Richard, summoning a harassed-looking waiter. ‘I’ll try for the cold chicken. Darling? The salmon for you?’

  They sat and waited, the women sipping champagne, Colin sipping a very light whisky and Richard working his way down a blue bottle of Ramaloosa, watching midnight roll across the whole of regimented China at a stroke and then arrive in Java, Sumatra, Mongolia; continuing to swing across the Russian Steppes, arriving in Novosibirsk. Then, after a few more minutes, Richard enjoyed a salad of duck’s liver pate with oranges and some French bread, while Robin essayed the Chef’s special seafood salad with tiger prawns.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ teased Kate. ‘You two at least got to eat the right species. We couldn’t even manage that.’

  As they ate, they discussed the festivities planned for the rest of the day. ‘The grand banquet from eight till midnight will be a bit flat if Chef doesn’t sort himself out,’ observed Kate, looking a little jealously at Robin’s salad.

  ‘The alternative is the Karaoke Bar,’ warned Colin darkly. ‘That runs from ten.’

  ‘We might be tempted,’ said Robin. ‘That’s one of Richard’s hidden talents. If he puts his mind to it, he does a perfectly flawless Frank Sinatra.’

  ‘Really?’ Kate’s interest was piqued. ‘I’d never have imagined.’

  Richard shrugged self-deprecatingly. ‘Emergencies only,’ he said. ‘Self-preservation.’

  ‘We might need to lean on you in any case,’ warned Colin. ‘I can’t imagine getting through the banquet without some fun and games overflowing into the dining salon.’

  ‘What is it, Richard?’ asked Robin, for he was looking decidedly preoccupied.

  ‘I don’t know, darling. It just seems so strange to be sitting here planning dinner and entertainment for the evening.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s just our situation here. Maybe it’s everything that’s happened so far. But somehow I just can’t see it happening as planned at all.’

  And just as Richard delivered himself of this dark sentiment a waiter appeared bearing a tray. A waiter whom they had never seen before; certainly not the one they had given their order to or the one who had brought the food they had just consumed. ‘One cold chicken salad and one poached salmon?’ said the waiter. And then stood, open-mouthed, as they all started to laugh.

  *

  ‘This is very serious, if you and Dai are sure,’ said Jolene. ‘If Killigan is a prime suspect, then it all turns around. Billy’s first set of records put Killigan at the centre of it all. The later ones move him out of the limelight altogether.’

  ‘What do you want to do, Jolene?’ asked T-Shirt. ‘We could sniff around, try to get more proof.’

  ‘Go and lean on Billy?’ suggested Dai. ‘He doesn’t look all that tough to me.’

  ‘Go confront Killigan himself?’ suggested Jilly.

  ‘No,’ said Jolene decisively. ‘We leave well alone. I don’t have any real legal jurisdiction and you guys certainly have none. This is American soil — sort of. We can continue trying to build a case, quietly, but we should do nothing that would prejudice the outcome of any eventual proceedings. And we call for back-up.’

  ‘Agent Smith,’ said T-Shirt dismissively.

  ‘Agent Jones,’ said Jolene with a tiny twinkle. T-Shirt was jealous. How delightful!

  ‘Not even Agent 007 could get over here in this weather,’ said Dai.

  ‘It’s too early for even the FBI to go confronting him, I’d say,’ said Jolene. ‘No, we just suggest to Jones that he take a close look at Killigan’s stuff at Armstrong. At his movements and any records by or about him left over there.’

  ‘Well,’ said T-Shirt, mellowing. ‘You’ve got copies of Killigan’s log as well as Billy’s, haven’t you? Want to go share a hot keyboard?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jolene, ‘I do believe I do. But we’d better go talk to Agent Jones first.’

  ‘Better hurry, then,’ said T-Shirt. ‘Wasn’t there going to be a big queue to use the radio round at about two pm? It’s almost that now.’

  ‘Almost two?’ wailed Jilly. ‘No wonder my tummy thinks my throat’s been cut! Come on Dai, bach. We’ve almost missed lunch!’

  The little group split up, with the hungry heading for the mayhem in the dining salon and the hunters running on up the companionways to the welcoming bridge and the spacious radio room.

  It was fortunate that the radio room was spacious, for quite a crowd was building up in it, spilling out onto the bridge itself. They were a cheery bunch, their ill-controlled festive excitement at odds with the grim demeanour of the captain and her senior navigating officers. And that grimness was only the merest reflection of the massive darkness still building relentlessly to port where the storm, whose wings were gathering high over them, flapping occasionally with the storm squalls and ice showers, was slowly, majestically rearing its hurricane-dragon head. Only the gathering, dangerous gloom and the captain’s strict ban of anything alcoholic from the bridge kept the excited party in the radio room under any sort of control. Jolene and T-Shirt found themselves on the fringes of an animated, chattering group whose favoured language was Russian but who occasionally lapsed into English. They were, they found, too late to slip in to the radio officer’s schedule. And even an appeal to the captain fell on deaf ears. Unless it was a matter of life and death, she ruled, they would have to wait to contact Armstrong. There were people here who had booked their calls weeks ago. And first in the queue was Billy Hoyle.

  As two o’clock neared, the tension began to mount, for there was no sign of Billy. Everyone else was bursting to get their message home the moment midnight crossed the Urals. Even the radio officer himself would be sending a message to his mother in his native Yorsk. But Billy was slated to go first. And everyone else would have to take their turn.

  As a distraction, the radio officer cleared the little screen of the computer beside his radio facilities so that the computer’s clock counted up on the VDU. The computer’s central programme was set to his own home time, and so the clock was counting, in big white figures on a bright blue screen, through the final seconds between 11:58:01 and 11:59:59, when Hoyle arrived, with Sergeant Killigan in tow and, of all people, Vivien Agran. At the sight of the entertainment officer, some of the party spirit left the little band. The lately-boisterous group fell back to allow her past.

  Hard on their heels, Richard and Robin arrived also, with Colin and Kate, not to use the radio but to gaze out at the black clouds. Catching Jolene’s eye, however, Richard flashed her one of his contagious, boyish grins. ‘Hi,’ he said, striding across the bridge towards her. ‘You were next on the list for a visit. To chew the fat. How’s the …’ He stopped speaking abruptly when he noticed the subjects of her investigation impatiently crowding up behind the radio operator. As though his sudden silence was the signal, the clock on the bright blue background of the computer went to 00:00:00

  A little cheer went through the crowd, for it was midnight in their homes too, and the beginning of the new millennium for their families and friends far away in Russia. But it soon died, to be replaced by demands that the radio operator get on with his duties.

  Everyone crowded forward, with Mrs Agran and her new American friends right at the very front, threatening to overwhelm the poor radio officer. Richard saw him take from Killigan a 3.5 in. floppy and push it into the port of the computer which still read 00:00:00 on its screen above. He put it in the port but did not click it home, his fingers busy on the keyboard. Clearing the clock, no doubt, opening the communications channels.

  But the clock was still reading 00:00:00.

  Richard realised then. It had to be at least ten seconds after midnight but the clock still read 00:00:00. He walked across to where Varnek was standing by his computer, looking out at the lowering blackness. A winding sheet of snow whipped across the face of it, torn away brutally by an ice-mailed fist of wind. ‘Do me a favour, Mr Va
rnek,’ he said quietly, just audible over the first pummelling blow of the wind on the ice-laden clearview. ‘Call up communications.’

  Varnek followed the gaze of those bright blue eyes down to the screen and his hand moved, obedient to something compelling in Richard’s quiet tone.

  Communications filled the whole screen. Varnek looked up.

  ‘Open any communications file,’ said Richard. ‘Radio, satellite VHF, TV …’

  Again, Varnek’s hand moved in obedience, opening the control and monitor file on the Internet function the radio operator was calling up as they spoke. It was as though the snow in the wind outside had found a way of leaking into the ether. Thin whiteness skidded wildly downwards and across the screen. A quick eye might distinguish some letters there. But it was mostly boxes, asterisks, circumflexes, exclamation marks and question marks: computer garbage.

  Horrorstruck, Varnek looked up at Richard and down again at the screen. Richard looked through into the radio room, at the immovable clock frozen on the computer screen, set, solid as a tombstone, at 00:00:00. ‘It’s dead,’ whispered Varnek.

  ‘It’s dead,’ called the radio operator in a horrified echo. ‘It’s all dead.’

  ‘And it died on the stroke of midnight,’ said Richard. ‘Captain Ogre, I’m afraid your computers have the millennium bug.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘That is impossible,’ said Irene Ogre in her day room five minutes later. ‘These computers are the latest model. Look at them. Pentium Processors. Intel inside. Windows Ninety-eight. They are proof against the millennium bug. There is no doubt about it. The bug is a — what do you say? — a damp squid. There must be some other explanation.’